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BIG PHYSICS, BIG QUESTIONS –

Acrylamide in food a “major concern”

By Nicola Jones

A chemical known to cause cancer in animals, and recently found in high levels in cooked foods like chips, is a “major concern”, according to an expert consultation group. The group says further research is “essential” to determine if these foods pose a hazard.

The meeting was hosted by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). It was called to assess the dangers of acrylamide after startlingly high amounts were found in a variety of baked and fried foods by a Swedish research team in April.

No one knows if acrylamide causes cancer in humans. But its discovery in common foods led to serious concern because people appear to eat so much of it.

The panel of 23 scientific experts concluded that far too little is known about how acrylamide forms in food, which foods it forms in, how to measure levels of it, how much of it people eat, and what health effects, if any, the chemical has.

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They recommended that an international acrylamide food network should be established to help resolve these issues.

“Limited knowledge”

“Our current limited knowledge does not allow us to answer all the questions which have been asked,” says Dieter Arnold of the Centre for Surveillance and Health Evaluation of Environmental Chemicals in Berlin, chairman of the consultation.

Studies of people exposed to acrylamide through their jobs have found no increase in tumour incidence. But these studies may have been too blunt to pick up any tiny effect, says the group.

“It’s not new to find carcinogens in food,” says Arnold. But, he adds&colon; “This is the first time we are dealing with a possible carcinogen in humans that we find in such high levels in food that people believe to be stable.”

The group concluded that people appear to down 0.3 to 0.8 micrograms of acrylamide per kilogram of body weight daily. That adds up to dozens of microgrammes per day. The WHO recommended maximum intake of the chemical in drinking water is just one microgramme per day.

Cooking methods

If acrylamide has the same effect on people as it does on rats, it could account for up to three per cent of all the cancer cases in a country like Sweden, according to figures from the Swedish National Food Organisation]. That would be an effect several hundred times stronger than that from other carcinogens in foods, such as aflatoxins in peanuts.

Until further studies are done, the group recommends that food should not be cooked excessively, that people should eat a balanced diet, moderating their intake of fried foods, and that researchers should investigate how to limit levels of acrylamide through different methods of cooking or preparation.

The international Snack Food Association agrees that further work needs to be done&colon; “What is important here is that it is far too early to draw any definitive conclusions from the limited data that has been made available to the scientific community,” it said in a statement.